I'm really enjoying the game overall, but one thing that stuck out to me as strange was how the 2nd Host section (the One) seems like it lifted the fighting system straight out of One Finger Death Punch. Like, even down to the "these enemies take 2 hits and these enemies switch sides after dodging your first hit".

Can... can they do that? I haven't finished the game yet, so maybe Silver Dollar Games is mentioned in the credits or something. It just seems pretty egregious. But then I am not a lawyer (also, those few fight scenes combined only make up like 2 minutes of total gameplay, so maybe it's not as big a deal)

@bbalpert:

This was also the first game I thought of when I played that section. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure they can do that. It's not like they stole any assets directly and gameplay mechanics are not neccessarily protected as far as I know. I bet there are a thousand clones of One Finger Death Punch. For example, look at the recent Unfinished of Way of the passive Fist. It's also very similar to those mechanics. Or One Hit KO on Steam.

Game Design is iterative and lots of mechanics are very similar to each other and quite hard to protect for a single game. In The Fall it's fine for me, because it is just part of a larger game. You could say it was inspired by other games. It's difficult to discern depending on the game. Did Fortnight steal from PUBG? Kind of, yeah.....but also no, right?

What is "stolen" and what is just "inspired by"? What is "part of a genre" and what is a "clone"?

You can't own game design. Anybody is free to make clones of anything if they aren't directly stealing assets or code.

You can't copyright and idea or how a game "feels". As long as they aren't using things like names, assets, code, etc. It's perfectly legal to do.

I could totally make a game that's an exact duplicate of Mario World, same layout, same jumps, etc as long as I make it from scratch. I could also right a comic book about a billionaire alcoholic who has an awesome robot suit and is sometimes friends with a patriotic guy who used to live in an Ice Cube.

I suppose the question of legality is pretty cut and dry here, but I do wonder if Silver Dollar Games is going to see that section and say "oh cool!" or "hey what the FUCK, Over The Moon?!"

To be clear, I hope it's the former and not the latter.